Major Algae Issue

I have a very close friend who has an 90 gallon reef tank and has been some type of algae issue ever (I took the for off of the word because it seems like its been that long). Some of the things I believe started it:

1. She started using an algae scrubber and after numerous adjustments the algae wouldn't go away. Could be that the gph were off or old bulbs.

2. She had a 2x175 or 250 MH fixture with 4 T5 bulbs. I know this might have been the major factor because the bulbs were both old and out dated.

3. She didnt have the back panel of her tank painted and it almost received direct sunlight on the regular.

4. The rock could be leaching badly. But I don't believe that could be the case because I gave her some of the rock and it came out of my old 125 tank.

Every week we have a competition to see whose numbers are the best and basically the areas she beats me in are nitrates and phosphates. On the average her nitrates are 5ppm or better and the highest I have seen her phosphates were .4 but lately they have been averaging around .08.

The cure we have started is now she is running a protein skimmer and a daisy chained reactors with gfo and carbon.

For the record she does have some true GHA but the other stuff I cannot identify whats so ever. I thought it might be diatoms or bryopsis.

I have attached a small photo of her tank and pics will follow.

‪My friends 90 gallon‬‏ - YouTube

 

I thought I saw some cyano in there. The protein skimmer should make a big difference.

 

No cyano unless its a rare color I havent seen before.

 

How is your friend's cleanup crew?

 

That's the other problem I forgot to mention. I added 50 hermits and 50 nerite snails to her tank from the purchase I ordered and they are all dead. Which leads me to believe something is in the tank I don't know about because i can see a couple dying but not all of them.

 

For that I would almost recommend a full 4 day complete black out after she manually removes as much as she can and to raise the pH to 8.4-8.6 consistently for a week or so. With dying corals and snails and hermits I might consider it to be some type of dinoflaggellates even though I see no bubbles.

A ATS should kick in after being up for a couple weeks.

 

We did that but for three days though. What's an ATS?

I'm strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach. I'm ReefBruh the reefing man. Toot Toot.

 

I'm strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach. I'm ReefBruh the reefing man. Toot Toot.

 

I'm strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach. I'm ReefBruh the reefing man. Toot Toot.

 

I'm strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach. I'm ReefBruh the reefing man. Toot Toot.